Increase in refining demand and tighter environmental regulations have led to sharp increases in hydrogen consumption of oil refineries. Hydrogen conservation and effective use are of interest to refineries whose operations and profitability are constrained by hydrogen. Purification is widely used in hydrogen networks of refineries to reduce hydrogen production load. To minimize hydrogen utility consumption, it is necessary to optimize the hydrogen network with purification as a whole. In this paper, for hydrogen purification process, a triangle rule (which can be generalized to polygon rule) is proposed for graphical representation of its mass balance. The proposed procedure treats the product concentration and recovery rate of the purification process as adjustable parameters. An ensuing graphical method is developed for targeting the pinch point and minimum utility consumption of the hydrogen system with purification reuse. This graphical method can be used for any purification devices and in systems with any utility concentration. A refinery case is studied to demonstrate the optimization method. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.